One step further for electrifying rural households in Africa: A novel electricity demand modelling approach

A limited amount of studies has focused on estimating the electricity demand of rural households (HH) in developing countries; and, the scope and application of these are limited to one or a small group of countries. This paper presents a methodology for modelling the electricity demand taking evidence from more than 30,000 rural households in 37 African countries. It starts with the estimation of electrical appliances ownership (by applying a linear regression method), and lighting consumption, considering different variables from national to household scale. A typical schedule and appliances’ usage are then created based on human behaviour patterns. As result, it was found that the average electricity demand to meet the basic requirements (lighting, charging mobile phones, and using radios) in rural Africa is 1.35kWh/HH/day (493kWh/HH/year). Then, considering a case study in Tanzania, the load profiles at a 15min resolution of a typical rural HH with and without grid connection are computed.